Matt Hardy

Follow Matt Hardy

Matt Hardy

Biography

Professional wrestler Matthew Moore Hardy was born on September 23, 1974 in Cameron, North Carolina, and is best known by his ring name Matt Hardy. He works for World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), wrestling on their Smackdown brand. Before he made it big in the business, he and his brother, Jeff, founded OMEGA, a wrestling organization which stands for Organization of Modern Extreme Grappling Arts. There, Hardy competed using the name High Voltage.

Matt and his brother were trained by former wrestler Dory Funk Jr. before his WWF career. The two of them, with their friends, already started their own federation, known as the TWF (Trampoline Wrestling Federation).

At OMEGA, Matt Hardy was able to hold many championships including the Heavyweight and Tag Team ones, with his brother and him gaining recognition for their efforts. They later rose to more notoriety on the WWE. Hardy eventually became a former six-time World Tag Team Champion, one-time WWE Tag Team Champion, and he has also had one WCW Tag Team Championship reign. In addition, he has won a number of singles championships, and is a former Hardcore, European, United States, Cruiserweight, and ECW Champion.

Hardy’s first WWF match took place on May of 1994, against Nikolai Volkoff. He lost by submission, but continued to wrestle sporadically throughout the year. After several losses, he was given his full-time WWF contract in 1998, as did his brother. They became known as The Hardy Boyz, and won their first WWF Tag Team Championship by defeating the Acolytes.

In 2002, however, Matt was relegated to the Heat brand while his brother, Jeff was on RAW. He later dubbed himself Matt Hardy: Version 1, and tried out for the WWE Cruiserweight Championship. He took time off for a while, mainly due to a knee injury, but came back after the conflict with Edge and Lita. In 2005, Vince McMahon announced Hardy’s return, and soon became the first man to defeat Mr. Kennedy. The next year, he reunited with his brother on an ECW on Sci Fi episode. The two of them competed in a match together against the Full Blooded Italians.

Matt Hardy was later drafted to ECW in June of 2008, and became the number 1 contender to Mark Henry’s ECW Championship. He soon won the ECW Championship during the Championship scramble, at Unforgiven, but lost the title to Jack Swagger in 2009.